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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

For many years now - in fact, for just about as long as I can remember - I've been Polish. Sure, I'm also Irish, German, Iroquois, Russian, and a shameful bit of Swedish that we don't talk about, but mostly I'm Polish. You can tell by my mom's maiden name which has 17 consonants and 2 vowels. But that's not the point.

The point is, my Polish brothers and sisters, that we of the Land of Pole have been the butt of jokes for many a year. And frankly, some cake decorators aren't helping the situation.

Allow me to illustrate.

This is the Polish flag:

Let's take a moment to admire it whilst humming the Polish National Anthem, shall we?

And now, allow me to present the Polish flag cake that brings shame on the land of my second great great uncle on my cousin's sister's husband's side:

What, the Wreckorator thought we wouldn't notice?!? Huh?

I mean, c'mon, our flag is way wider than that.

Thanks, Cristen. Oh, and for the rest of you: keep in mind that the two comment moderators here are me and my sister Anne-Marie, and we share slightly warped Polish/Irish mean streaks. So comment...carefully.

Best comment so far: ugh, I wouldn't touch that with a 6 foot Pole (wait, how tall are you?)-tjbmurph

As a fellow person with Polish heritage (and an unpronounceable maiden name to prove it), I sympathize. I recently had it pointed out to me that my email address (which is my initials followed by my current very German last name - which conveniently ends in z) looks like nonsense to the untrained eye. Never occurred to me. Still doesn't mean I want a poop-colored cake.

wv: hyxionge - not sure what it means, but it has enough consonants to qualify as a Polish last name!

I couldn't tell if that was frosting or a piece of a cardboard box. There is a World Flag Database which would have been helpful to this wreckereator (I think it's flags.net - I used it to make a French flag for a Three French Hens Christmas ornament one year). Anyway, how do you get a three-color, striped flag wrong? It's not like it's Swaziland or Fiji, or some other "busy" design.

Yay! I'm Polish too! Well, also a blend of other English-ish stuff, but my dad's side is pure Polish/Ukrainian (I guess the border where my ancestor's village was was right on the border, so as the border shifted....so we say Polish/Ukrainian). My last name also has 1 vowel and 7 consonants (though I guess two of they Ys count as vowels). Go us! When I get married, I'm keeping it. It's super handy...when someone calls your house, you automatically know they're a stranger if they can't pronounce the name.

Wow. Happy Birthday, Zabel. I hope your birthday was filled with all you love most, and that your cake gave you a hearty laugh before you and your loved ones cut it into dozens of little bitty pieces and ate it.

I think the saddest part is that it appears to have been made with that edible paper stuff and perhaps the ink cartridge was low and came out with poo color instead of red or the wreckerator thought it best to match the color....maybe no one will notice.....lol

Speaking as someone with only two vowels in her 7 letter last name, I can tell you that that is the flag of the Polish-Ukranian border duchy of Pukerania...and we don't take kindly to our flag, which was inspired from a detail from a camouflage rag someoneone found, being 'dissed' on the 'Net..we challenge you to a bake-off..

What's a Pole? You do know that those Wikings went waping and pillaging all over Poland - there is a fine DNA difference between a Wiking and some Poles - especially in us blondes. And, of course, Poland is a slavic country with its boundaries changing on a yearly basis with the Russians and Germans/Austrians redrawing them for centuries. That's probably why we are so funny - not just because our last names are unpronouncable :-). Norine

Maybe the stockers were screwing around with the computer monitor the night before, you know, turning people green and purple. When the boss caught them and told them to get back to work, they didn't have time to reset the colors. Then the decorator comes in and finds an order for the Polish flag. And thus was born another cake wreck.

So here I am, thinking, "surely, even a wreckerator has enough respect not to write on a flag, so the 'flag' must be the patch of unpronounceable 'color' at the bottom." *Facepalm*

It is distinctly possible that the wreckerator was both colorblind and the only person in the shop who was aware of what was ordered. Thus, when the printer barfed, there was no way to know that it wasn't supposed to look like that. Two words: quality control.

Not that there is an excuse for actually handing that cake to a customer, but I can guess what might have happened. Red food colors fade fairly quickly in bright light (think any 24 hour large supermarket where it's never dark). It may have been a lovely red color the three days before when they decorated the cake and set it aside. Shudder. Three day old cake - ew.

All of my relevant comments about the cake have been made by others. However, to add to the color debate: I was taught that puce is the color of cockroaches (the big ugly dark ones) and that taupe is the color of elephants.

Oh Ämma, you took the words right out of my mouth. I'm not Swedish or Polish by the way. At least I don't think I am. It's hard to tell cause I'm adopted, but I seem to be some kind of Scottish person. Och! :D

I hope this doesn't post twice, because the first time I got an error. So here goes try number two.

I'm Polish on my father's side, and can't believe it took this post to realize that I had no idea how the Polish national anthem went or even sounded like. So I looked it up, got sidetracked by a video of a five year old Polish girl singing it completely (and adorably) wrong, and well, thanks to Cakewrecks that's how my morning went :)

PS my family's from Poland too, originally (both sides). OK, today it's western Ukraine, and for a while it was Russia, but at the time they left for North America, it was still Poland. It really is impressive where all the readers here are from :)

One other way of wrecking (or re-purposing) a Polish flag cake would be to turn it upside down - then it would become an Indonesian flag cake - either that, or it would become a Polish distress signal, depending on which way you look at it... If you left the Polish flag the right way up it would become an Indonesian distress signal...

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